Tuesday, June 21, 2011

Image by takomabibelot via FlickrSalem's chapter of Move to Amend is meeting at Clockworks Cafe & Cultural Center tomorrow night (Wednesday, June 22) at 5:30 p.m. to help plan events for July 4, with the intent of helping educate people about the dire need to reclaim our democracy from the machines (corporations) that have taken over the exercise of most political power and who are marginalizing real people at a breathtaking speed.

Its from the Move To Amend website - ideas for 4th of July action(s). I don't have the agenda ready just yet, but it will be dominated by discussion and perhaps break-out sessions to brainstorm about ways to educate the public about the current state of our 'democracy' on the anniversary of our nation's founding. The link above is filled with ideas.

Yikes! Hundreds of teachers and librarians laid off in Salem, many more across the state. Meanwhile, the Lege is seriously considering pumping money into a for-profit School-o'-Matic dealie that would profit one particular legislator greatly?!

Today, after much public outcry, legislators stood up for Oregon students and narrowly voted down Rep. Matt Wingard’s pet bill--House Bill 2301, which would divert tax dollars away from our public schools to for-profit virtual school vendors. The bill would have been a boon to Wingard and Connections Academy, the for-profit online charter school corporation that pays him.

Wingard’s self-dealing on this bill drew strong criticism from many Oregonians, who were angry that this bill was negotiated behind closed doors, all for the financial benefit of one legislator. This opposition kept the bill from passing today.

But now, some legislators are feeling pressure to change their votes. The Oregon House is likely to bring back the bill for another vote, as early as tomorrow (Tuesday) morning.

In a legislative session when critical bills can’t even get one vote in the House (BPA Ban, Tuition Equity, Foreclosure Protection), we’re seriously going to give Wingard a second vote on his self-dealing bill that would do real harm to our public schools that are already suffering? A second chance to line his own pockets with taxpayer dollars?

We’ve asked a lot of you in the past few weeks, and it’s made a big difference. With this important bill on the line, we need you to join us once again in telling our legislators to stand up for Oregon students and say NO to Matt Wingard’s self-serving bill—again.

Reading all these price predictions by peaksters, I'm reminded of the Austrian economist Murray Rothbard who said, "The only function of economic forecasting is to make astrology look respectable."

We know that the media (government / business / religious leaders) are giving very little attention to Peak Oil, but I would like us to consider what we, the Peak Oil community, are not talking about:

We're not talking about slamming the brakes on fossil fuels.

Even as our contribution to creating Peak Oil awareness begins to see a little light (at least in some circles), I am concerned that we will be so worried about saving our own bacon or appearing to be rational that we will fail to take posterity into account. If we are to save just a little oil for our children, we need to just plain stop using oil (gas, coal).

"Conservation" doesn't capture the urgency of our existential moment in history. In fact, conservation is like a salve to assuage the conscience of well-meaning people who are stuck in “business as usual.” We can be conned into thinking that we are doing our part by swapping out incandescent light bulbs.

Why can't we just use less oil? If you are drowning, drowning slower isn't going to save your life.

If you are in the know (Peak Oil), it's not about telling others to slow down. We have to abandon the artifacts of the oil-based economy and retool.

It requires a fundamental shift. It's about transforming society from oil to ingenuity. We must slam on the brakes and turn about-face.

Nuclear power swirled down into the ocean in March and humanity's perceived energy options narrowed sharply. We are back to where our great-grandparents were their whole lives: figuring out from-one-day-to-the-next how to live within a solar budget. They did it (or we wouldn't be here having this conversation). We can do it too.

But we have to shift gears.

We are sliding down the back side of the peak, and just like with most mountains, the dark side is steeper than the sunny side. Will it be a soft or hard landing? Well... it depends:

If we have already used up too much of our natural resources, it will be a hard landing. (Time will tell.)

If we "conserve," I don't see how we can avoid a hard landing. Going slower sliding off the cliff is still sliding off the cliff.

We are aiming at the tail feathers of the goose that passed by here already a while ago. We need a word somewhere between conservation (voluntary) and deprivation (involuntary, Mother Nature's decision) - something to make it obvious that we aren't stuck promoting the same old baggage. The ship is going down. I repeat: we must jettison the artifacts of oil. If we hang onto them, they will sink us for good. (Some of Cortez' men loaded their pockets with gold as they were escaping the Aztecs. When a causeway collapsed, many of them sank like stones and drowned.)

What legacy are we leaving for our children? What robust assets will they have at their disposal to climb back out of the hole we put them into? Why are we postponing this radical change? By waiting even one day, we are willy nilly leaving the solution up to our children. But what advantage are we giving them by drilling for more oil, mining more coal, fracking more gas? We are handing them a polluted world, a mountain of debt, hobbled with depleted resource deposits, and blindfolding them - all the while talking seriously about the price of oil for the next year.

We aren't calling enough attention to carbon-based boondoggles ("shovel-ready" projects). Anyone who designs a system or artifact (highway, bridge, tunnel, airport, automobile, bus) that depends on imported oil is a traitor. After all, eight presidents in a row have proclaimed that imported oil is a threat to national security. Promoting a construction project to convey vehicles operating on mostly imported oil is now an act of treason.

I hear the question, "What percentage of our energy demand can be replaced by renewables?" There are two unchallenged assumptions that frame this question and illuminate our fossil-fuel mindset.

1.One good answer is none. "Replacement" suggests doing things the same way. We can't "replace" oil with sunshine any more than we were able to "replace" horses with high-speed 4-legged robots shaped like horses. We jettisoned horses and made devices with engines and wheels. Now we must jettison devices with engines and wheels that are 1% efficient, that weigh 2 tonnes to move 100 kg.

Now how do we get biodiesel? Photosynthesis can convert 3-6% of sunshine into soybean plants. Then we take the oily portion of the plant (you can't make oil out of the stems) so even assuming that it takes zero energy to harvest and process that plant material into oil, your net efficiency is <<1% = stupid. (Using 100 gal/acre/year, I estimated that 0.05% of the sun's energy is converted to soy biodiesel. I've heard of yields as high as 600 gal/acre/year for "next-generation" biofuels. Give them the benefit of the doubt, and we're at 0.3% efficient, still <<1%. Correct me if I'm wrong.)

Now put that <<1% efficient biodiesel (stupid) into a car that is <1% efficient (stupid) and you get << 0.01% efficient. The result? Compound stupid."

2.Another answer is 100%. Built into the question (remember the question, "percentage of energy ... replaced by renewables") is the curious assumption that we have a choice. We don't.

Most of humanity lived within a solar budget until World War II.

As near as I can tell, we have no option but to return to 100% renewables, whatever that may look like. (I'm all ears if you think you have found something else.) With the incredible amount of knowledge and skills we have gained during the fossil fuel era, we are much more capable than our grandparents to take on the task. If we are to avoid becoming a dead branch on the evolutionary tree, we will switch to renewables now so we can leave something for our children to work with.

It's not "practical." We will face skepticism and ridicule. But those who embrace renewables now will be the sellers in the post-oil economy, and there will be plenty of buyers who postponed the inevitable shift.

Slam on the brakes! Save the oil!

======================

Ron Swenson, ASPO-USA Board of Directors (Note: Commentaries do not necessarily represent the position of ASPO-USA.)

Editorial Note: Ron Swenson's call to reconsider the tenor of our debate in its entirety is the full version of his excerpt originally found here in the third edition of “ASPO-USA Asks: What are we missing?" from early June 2011. The first two parts of that series are available here and here.

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Jan 19, 2008: LOVESalem reaches the web, bringing a vitally needed message to Oregon's capital city: We must Oregon-ize to put the needs of people before the needs of cars. This requires that we live our environmental values -- that we LOVE (Live Our Values Environmentally) Salem -- by working to stop the Sprawl Machine.

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